Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo ★★★★✩
Performers: Freiburger BarockConsort. Zürcher Sing-Academy . Dir. Chorus: M. Amherd. Musical direction: René Jacobs. Place and date: Liceu (16/II/2024)
A closed and unanimous ovation consecrated the last visit of the great René Jacobs at the Liceu. Hypnotic concert version of L'Orfeo by Monteverdi, in a personal edition devised by Jacobs himself, where the Dionysian ending and the more common Apollonian ending occurred continuously in a performance that demonstrated why Jacobs is one of the best batons of this repertoire.
Leading the pluperfect Freiburger BarockConsort and the ideal Zürcher Sing-Akademie, Jacobs outlined a theatrical reading, with very fine sonic nuances, with some ritornelli that were a delight for their variations in dynamics and rhythms.
If the orchestra's soloists put together a sound world that transported the absorbed spectator to 17th century Mantua, the grace of the voices of the Zürcher Sing-Akademie provided freshness, flexibility and contrasts in choirs of nymphs, shepherds, infernal spirits , bacchantes and satyrs, doing justice to a vocal writing with a subjugating result.
The Orfeo of the baritone Yannick Debus (Hamburg, 1991) was magnificent, who showed the best projected instrument, with a more operatic layout and an identification with the role that combined style, diction and sensitivity. At his side, Isabel Pfefferkorn's Euridice was more discreet, who paled before the voluptuous Proserpina of Eva Zaïcik, the serious attractiveness of Pluto/Echo of Orpheus, by Neal Davies or those of a humorous Christian Senn as Charon.
The vocal finesse of the countertenor Raffaele Pe, whose projection could be improved, as Esperanza/Poet and the empathetic Musica/Messenger of Olivia Vermeulen, attracted attention.
With this third visit by René Jacobs in this majestic Monteverde Orfeo, and after his readings of Telemann's Orfeo (2022) and Gluck's (2023), a memorable trilogy closes where historicist criteria and a refined and mature style have given three masterpieces of interpretation.
Orfeo never sounded so appropriate at the Liceu, his home, because all opera theaters are Orfeo's house, and if they have René Jacobs at the helm as musical demiurge, the privilege becomes a revelation.
